In recent years, with the growing development of e-commerce and online shopping, the new form of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), product/service reviews have received increased attention from researchers. The objective of the research is to examine the effects of eWOM valence and consistency on eWOM persuasiveness and consumers’ online shopping decision making. 83 college students are randomly assigned to four pieces of multi-media player webpage to evaluate how the valence, consistency and form of eWOM affect their online shopping decision making. For further information about how eWOM works in consumers’ cognition systems and then impact their decision-making, the research also measures recognition rates of five different kinds of eWOM. The results indicate that: 1. The impact of negative eWOM is generally greater than positive eWOM, namely negativity bias. The purchase probability for the negative eWOM tends to be lower than the positive eWOM. 2. The consistency of eWOM has significantly impact on consumer online shopping. Reading consistent product reviews, the purchase probability is lower than those who read different product reviews. 3. The form of eWOM moderate the effect of the valence and consistency on consumer purchase intention. Specifically, in the subjective product review group, consistent negative product reviews have much more impact on purchase probability than the inconsistent negative product reviews, while for positive ones, the consistency has no significantly effect on purchase intention. In the objective product review group, purchase probability for different positive product reviews is bigger than that of consistent positive ones, while the consistency of negative product reviews seems to have no impact on consumer online shopping. 4. Out of the five kinds of eWOM, the recognition rate of the negative and subject product reviews is the highest, and the rate of the positive and subject reviews seems to be the lowest one.
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